


The First Day of the Rest of Our Lives

by smug_rabbit



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 02:48:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10480440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smug_rabbit/pseuds/smug_rabbit
Summary: Solitude doesn't come easy for Togami, even as his troublesome peers shrink in number. Spoilers until Chapter 5.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Set after Chapter 5's trial. Contains spoilers. Thanks to vanerz for being a fantastic beta!

Asahina wouldn’t stop wailing. Fukawa chewed her fingernails. Kirigiri looked stunned, with her eyes bulging and jaw clenched shut. Even Hagakure was silent for once. He didn’t have the heart to try and pull everyone together this time, like he had for Ishimaru. Instead, he buried his face in his hands, untidy dreadlocks spilling out of his palms.

It was the five of them left. Naegi’s luck had run out.

‘Disappointing,’ Togami broke Asahina’s incessant crying. ‘Another fool brought down by his own arrogance and lack of planning.’

He was disappointed when nobody contradicted him.

 

* * *

* * *

 

No matter how many times he woke up here, Togami could never get used to the low ceiling.

 _Naegi won’t be bothering me with questions about my life today_ , he thought as he scrabbled for his glasses. No more whining about how Togami was so cold, no probing questions about his life. Nobody else was going to the library and make futile attempts to start conversation. The thought made Togami shiver, and he didn’t know why.

He hoped Asahina wouldn’t still be crying. First she’d lost Sakura, now Naegi: how long it would be before she snapped?

Togami was more annoyed than upset at Naegi’s execution. Early on, he’d pegged Naegi as a harmless brat who’d be amongst the first killed. But even Togami acknowledged that with Naegi’s likeability, it was possible that he would survive until it was just the two of them amongst the final three left in Hope’s Peak. Nobody out of the final three could murder anyone without the other survivor immediately realising who it was. The Killing Game would end, they’d all be freed, and Togami would leave on a helicopter out of Hope’s Peak, Naegi and this accursed school far beneath him.

And now that plan was over. Naegi had been  punished for his fatal mistake of murdering Ikusaba. He’d had a clever plan to be sure, but Kirigiri was too good a detective.

As he rolled out of bed and brushed his teeth, he resolved not to think of Naegi ever again. The morning’s focus - and his new main goal in life - was to thwart a new round of Fukawa’s stalking.

 

* * *

* * *

 

After a quick breakfast, throughout which he prayed Genocider Syo or Fukawa wouldn’t interrupt, the Super High School Level Heir retired to the library as usual. At the rate he was reading at, he’d finish everything in the library within months. Even if the murders were slowing down, he had to make the books last in case his remaining classmates took their sweet time polishing each other off. Today’s book was “Switch”, about two girls with polar opposite personalities who switched bodies and struggled to live each other’s lives without giving away the deception.

Every so often, he found himself waiting for the soft creak of the door that would tell him Naegi was coming in.

Time passed and Togami lost track of it. The only indication that it had was his growling stomach. Before he could get up to go to the kitchen, there was a creak and Togami spun around in his seat. Nothing was there. But someone _was_ there. Their eyes were on him.

‘Still reading that book, Togami? It was the same one as yesterday,’ someone said in his own voice.

‘Yes. I thought I should slow down the pace of reading lest I finish all the books in this library before the game ends.’

‘It’ll continue for that long, huh?’

‘My newfound free time is not a licence to annoy me, Naegi.’

He could sense Naegi poring over his shoulder, standing in the way of the desk lamp's light. The words on the page were barely visible.

‘You’re not going finish all these books before you snap.’

‘Nonsense. I only need survive one more murder case before the killing game is rendered unplayable. The endgame is near, and I will emerge victorious as always.’

Togami found that he couldn’t see the words on the page anymore. ‘Shouldn’t you be with your beloved Kirigiri? Spending your precious last days procreating like desperate peasants?’

‘There’s nothing betwee-’

‘I actually don’t care about your love life. Go away.’

Togami slammed the book shut. He reached over to flick off the lamp switch, but as his hand brushed over it, he found that it was already off.

His stomach hurt even worse now.

 

* * *

* * *

 

‘Hey, hey, it’s Togami Party!’

He didn’t acknowledge Hagakure’s presence. He was just in the kitchen to make some food, not make conversation with someone who wasn’t even worthy of being a mute footstool.

‘Nothing to say, huh?’ The SHSL Fortune Teller scratched his forehead as he dug through the fridge, humming and hawing as he did so.

As for Togami, he was more concerned for his work-in-progress on the stove, a Thai curry. Although he used to have servants to cook meals for him, Togami could look after himself, even with the lack of highest-quality fish and marble beef around here. His lips curled at the thought of the plebeian substitutes Monokuma had sought to feed him with, and he brought down the knife particularly hard on the spring onions. Lamb off-cuts and chicken wings? Beneath him. Of course, the others wouldn’t mind, but with a palette as refined as Togami’s, he deserved better than mouldy avocados and rice that wouldn’t soften no matter how much water he put in the pot. Togami intensified the chopping, lifting the knife higher each time, the thud of the blade echoing throughout the kitchen.

‘Uh, you okay there, bud?’

Clenching the kitchen knife in his slender fingers, gripping the blade until the veins on his hand began popping out of his skin, Togami was tempted to stab his classmate right where he stood.

With a grunt, Hagakure returned to the fridge, whistling and clicking his fingers as he did so. Togami dropped the knife and shoved it away from him as far as he could. No, he couldn’t murder Hagakure here. Nobody in the Togami family believed in God or karma, but if he rid the world of such a pest right here, by some miracle, he would pass the class trial as the blackened. Togami smirked at the thought of outwitting Kirigiri as he glanced at the ingredients that hadn’t been tossed into the boiling pot.

Garlic, spring onions, dried green chilli. He had everything.

Except condiments. He always took his curry with a sprinkle of coriander or chives on top. And wasn’t there some coriander in the fridge?

To his dismay, Hagakure’s unruly mop of brown hair was still buried in the fridge door. By the looks of his empty hands, he hadn’t even taken any food out yet. The fridge was beeping in frantic impatience, begging the door to be shut before all the cold air flowed out.

‘Are you still there?’ Togami snapped.

‘Relax, man. I’m deciding on what I wanna eat.’

‘Pick your ingredients, and get your lice-infested dreadlocks out of my way.’

‘I don’t have lice-’

Togami felt his eye twitch, something that was happening a lot lately. ‘Stop arguing with me, it’s wasting time. Just hurry up and shut the fridge door. That infernal beeping is giving me a migraine.’

‘Alright, alright.’

Hagakure scooped up some cheese and headed back into the dining hall, shouting greetings at Fukawa, whose mouth Togami had ordered shut, and the despondent Asahina, who’d been slumped at one of the benches when he passed by earlier. Togami stomped back to the fridge, noting that Hagakure had forgotten to close the door. If the SHSL Fortune Teller wasn’t so dumb, he might’ve done it on purpose.

Furthering his dismay, Hagakure had re-arranged all the food. The milk, previously on the door’s shelf, had been moved to the top shelf, and the fruit had been taken out of its drawer and scattered all around.

‘Where’s the coriander?’ he muttered.

Finally, he found it, crushed underneath a juice carton. He slammed the door shut. With the fridge’s infernal beeping gone, he could now hear the hissing behind him.

The curry!

It was dribbling over the side of the pot into the stove flame. He scrambled to shut it off, but it was too late. The curry dripped onto the kitchen bench, down the cupboards and onto the floor. So distracted he was by Hagakure, that he’d forgotten to dim the flame.

‘Not good at everything after all, are ya?’

Great, now Hagakure was back in the kitchen. The older student opened a drawer and pulled out towels, throwing them onto the floor atop the mess.

‘I predicted this would happen. This morning, my crystal ball told me that someone was going to make a rookie mistake. Who knew, it turned out to be you!’

‘With a prediction that vague, anything could be twisted to fit that judgement.’

Hagakure ignored him, rubbing the towels against the floor.

‘You’re spreading the mess even further.’

‘Oh, wha-sorry. Guess I’ve been a bit distracted.’

‘I was under the impression that “distracted” was your default mode,’ came out of Togami’s mouth, but Hagakure was still talking.

‘Naegi killed Ikusaba.’

Togami recoiled at the mention of Naegi, and he felt ashamed at displaying weakness in front of the likes of Hagakure. At the same time, he was curious. The survivors had a mutual, unspoken agreement never to mention the deceased again after a trial, and this was the first time any of them had broken it. ‘He did. So what?’

On closer inspection, Hagakure looked more dazed than usual, which Togami didn’t think was possible. But his eyes were bleary and unfocused, and his goofy smile seemed forced.

‘Like, I never thought he had it in him. Except for when we all thought he did Maizono in, you know?’ Hagakure laughed, a humourless bark. ‘Back when we barely knew each other. After all he said in the other trials…he was supposed to be the best of us. Even in the last investigation, I never got the idea that he was trying to trick us.’

‘Of course you wouldn’t.’

The insult went over Hagakure’s head, as expected. ‘Guess being the Lucky Student helped him. He managed to hide his evilness from us for so long.’

‘Luck only goes so far. Anyone dependent on luck is doomed to failure. I, for one, have never needed luck to be successful. I earned my position through effort and natural intelligence, whereas Naegi was where he deserved to be: beneath me.’ Thinking of Naegi's corpse now rotting in the trash chute, he added with satisfaction, ‘In more ways than one.’

Hagakure shook his head as if he understood Togami, the dreadlocks flapping from side to side. ‘Aw, don’t act like you don’t wanna socialise, Togami. That library isn’t big enough for you. I miss the little guy. He was fun to talk to, right?’

Togami blinked. ‘No.’ He hated how his voice rose in pitch on that one syllable. How unconvincing. ‘No,’ he repeated, more firmly. ‘He was not the most intellectually stimulating company. H-hardly an issue for you, I’m sure.’

His stuttering denials only drew a sly wink from Hagakure. ‘When I saw you walking Naegi around during that investigation into Fujisaki’s murder, I thought, “Look at you, not being mean to someone for once.” Then I saw you two together again after Sakura died. At that point, I was thinking “Hell, they enjoy working with each other.”’

‘He hasn’t stopped pestering me, actually,’ he murmured, soft enough for Hagakure to not notice. This conversation was getting too friendly, too unnerving. But before ending it, he had to ensure that Hagakure knew that Togami Byakuya most definitely, certainly never cared for anyone. ‘True, I misjudged his character.’ Togami clenched his fists. ‘At least I can claim my predictions to be right more than thirty percent of the time. I saw that he wasn’t a threat. That’s the only reason why I acknowledged him.’

Hagakure was already speaking over him before he finished.

‘Yeah, whatever. You should be concerned. I mean, if Naegi could kill someone, anyone could. Even me.’

There was silence for a second.

Hagakure laughed and punched Togami’s arm. ‘Just kidding, Byakuya. Look at your face.’

When had Hagakure become so casual about the killing game? He was the last one to realise their situation wasn’t a prank, laughing about their imprisonment and calling Monokuma’s bluffs, right up until he saw Enoshima impaled before his eyes. With some alarm, Togami realised that he was concerned for his fellow classmate’s aberrant behaviour. First Naegi, now Hagakure. Everyone was defying his expectations. He must be losing it. No, it was everyone else who was going crazy here.

‘You’re cool and rich and smart, but you’re not perfect, Byakuya. Stop trying to act above us all.’

Togami readjusted his glasses. There was no convincing the idiot. He’d wasted enough time here, time which he could be idling away in a more productive fashion, doing anything other than losing IQ points talking to the intellectual vacuum-and-void combo that was Hagakure Yasuhiro.

‘Farewell, Hagakure. I look forward to avoiding you for the rest of your life.’

Togami picked up what was left of his curry, sprinkling the bits of coriander on top. Hagakure was right. If the best of them could murder someone, everyone else here could as well. Togami's rock-solid faith in himself, his burgeoning faith in others – they had been shattered, and now he had no choice but to live alone lest he become the next victim. For all his bluster, Togami knew leaving Hope’s Peak was not a certainty. Not when he’d got so much wrong already.

_I’ve been here too long._

At least he could still try to plan his way out. Maybe Kirigiri would make a useful ally in case either the ill-disciplined Hagakure or Asahina began succumbing to their baser desire to escape. He wouldn’t put it past Asahina to try another gambit to get someone killed. One only needed to look at the scattered boxes of doughnuts on the dining hall tables to see the extent of her self-control.

From the dining hall, Togami heard the light footsteps of someone approaching. A girl. Hagakure was in the kitchen and Fukawa and Asahina were already in the dining hall, so it had to be Kirigiri.

Upon closer listening, the footfalls were too uneven. There were two sets of steps, one plodding just behind the other. Togami furrowed his brow. Who else was there in the school? Monokuma? The mastermind? Mukuro Ikusaba, returned from the dead and seeking vengeance upon those who had burned her corpse?

The other impossible thought broke into his mind. Or perhaps it was a wishful one.

‘Naegi?’

 


End file.
